Heceta Head Light — lighthouse
Image by ArtTower from Pixabay

Heceta Head Light

  • 1 min read
  • 44.137° N 124.128° W

Interesting facts

  • Its Fresnel lens contains 640 two-inch-thick prisms arranged in eight bull's-eye panels, made in Birmingham, England.
  • According to legend, a friendly ghost called Rue haunts the keeper's house, sweeping up broken glass for residents.
  • The rock for the tower's base was quarried on the Clackamas River near Oregon City, with masonry shipped from San Francisco.
  • The first head keeper reached the remote station on foot, by train and finally a 24-mile walk down the beach.
  • After a 1961 rockslide cut the power, the keepers turned the lens by hand from midnight until 7:30 in the morning.
  • The lens stopped rotating in 2000 after 106 years of service and was restored before being relit in 2001.
  • Three keeper families once lived here, enough for the station to have its own one-room schoolhouse.
  • The whole light station, including the keepers' houses, cost about $80,000 to build in the early 1890s.
  • The head keeper's own house was demolished in 1940, leaving the assistants' duplex that still stands today.

Why it is worth it

Heceta Head Light stands on a forested headland above the Pacific on the central Oregon coast, its white tower set on a ledge some 205 feet above the surf. The headland is named after Bruno de Heceta, the Spanish navigator who explored this coast in the late eighteenth century. Construction began in 1892 with a crew of 56, and the light was first lit in 1894.

The tower itself is modest, 56 feet high, but it carries a first-order Fresnel lens made by the English firm Chance Brothers, and its white flash every ten seconds reaches some 21 nautical miles out to sea, making it the strongest light on the Oregon coast. The light was automated in 1963 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. A careful restoration between 2011 and 2013 stripped away later stucco, repaired the metalwork and returned the tower to its 1894 appearance.

Below the lighthouse, the white Queen Anne-style keeper's house, originally a duplex for the assistant keepers, now operates as a bed-and-breakfast. The setting is what makes Heceta Head memorable: the white tower on its ledge, seen from the beach below with dark forest behind and the ocean breaking on the rocks, is one of the classic views of the Pacific Northwest. The trails through spruce and salal on the headland offer chances to see sea lions, and gray whales during their migrations, and the Sea Lion Caves lie about two miles away.

Getting there

The lighthouse is about 13 miles (20 km) north of Florence on US Highway 101; Coos Bay, the nearest larger city, is about 86 km to the south. The nearest airport is Southwest Oregon Regional Airport (OTH), about 81 km away. From Highway 101, turn onto Cape Creek Road to the Heceta Head Lighthouse State Scenic Viewpoint car park by the beach; a trail of about half a mile climbs past the keeper's house to the lighthouse.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Oregon 8The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Beautiful Lighthouses in the United States 5The Most Beautiful 19th-Century Lighthouses 5The Greatest 19th-Century Engineering Wonders 22The Most Beautiful Lighthouses 26The Greatest Engineering Wonders in the United States 26The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271

From the encyclopaedia

Heceta Head Light is a lighthouse on the Oregon Coast 13 miles (21 km) north of Florence, and 13 miles (21 km) south of Yachats in the United States. It is located at Heceta Head Lighthouse State Scenic Viewpoint, a state park, midway up a 205-foot-tall (62 m) headland. Built in 1894, the 56-foot (17 m)-tall lighthouse shines a beam visible for 21 nautical miles, making it the strongest light on the Oregon Coast.

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44.13737, -124.12784per Wikidata